It’s not okay, and it’s not going to be okay anytime soon, and we have to keep looking at it and calling it by its name.
***
“Officer Go Fuck Yourself.”
***
“There is a growing chorus of military veterans who have chimed in on the absurdity of photographs like this one. Let me join the parade. What we’re seeing here is a gaggle of cops wearing more elite killing gear than your average squad leader leading a foot patrol through the most hostile sands or hills of Afghanistan.”
A former Marine catalogues the military equipment being used and misused by Ferguson police.
As smoke hangs over the streets of Ferguson, Missouri, it’s important to understand its source. Some of this understanding will require us to reassess the history of police militarization in the United States. This will mean acknowledging its origins in the aftermath of the Watts Riots (1965) and the birth of the SWAT team shortly thereafter. It will mean noting the conservative reaction to the Warren Court’s civil libertarian protections in the 1950s and 60s to President Nixon’s launching of the drug war at the end of that same tumultuous decade. It will mean harping on President Reagan’s wholehearted embrace of racial policing and mass incarceration in the 1980s. It will mean interrogating the devastating effects of the 1208 Program (1990), which became the 1033 Program (1996), both of which authorized the transfer of military hardware to domestic precincts, a practice that has only accelerated in the wake of the Battle of Seattle (1999) and the attacks of September 11, 2001. The basic contours of this trajectory can be found in Radley Balko’s Rise of the Warrior Cop: The Militarization of America’s Police Forces (2013). As Tamara K. Nopper and Mariame Kaba argue in Jacobin, however, any serious reckoning must account for the ongoing dehumanization of black people, tout court.
***
From friend of the Toast Jamelle Bouie:
“An overbearing police presence is a defining feature of life in Ferguson and the rest of North County. Last year in Ferguson, 86 percent of stops, 92 percent of searches, and 93 percent of arrests involved blacks, despite the fact that police found more “contraband” stopping white residents than black ones.”
***
“How Ferguson exposes the racial bias in local elections”
***
“But that’s the crux of white supremacist racial logic: the problem with black people is … well, black people – not mass incarceration and the deindustrialization of urban America, not educational inequality and generational poverty, not 400 years of slavery, lynchings, and Jim Crow. To be black in America is to be victimized and then made responsible for our victimization. We built this country. But, apparently, it is we who are lazy and dependent. We are bullied politically, socially and economically. But it is we who are called “thugs”.
“There is never an excuse for violence against police,” President Obama said. Yet there are endless excuses for state violence against black people…
Alongside the immediate arrest of Darren Wilson, we must demand the demilitarization of law enforcement as well as the decriminalization of the black body. In addition to the withdrawal of the curfew and National Guard, we must demand the withdrawal of apartheid police forces and local governments where a black majority is ruled by a white minority. We cannot depend on the same police force that killed Brown to liberate us. In Ferguson and across the nation we must push for the implementation of community-oriented police models that include prevention, problem-solving, citizen engagement and community partnerships. There needs to be a cop-watch program in every city across America with a high concentration of people of color.”
***
do it for the vine
***
“I remember the talk. (The Talk? It certainly carried the psychological weight of a proper noun.) I guess it was never actually one Talk — it was more that I heard a series of smaller talks from my parents, both of whom are Caribbean immigrants. They’d couch it in the language of difference, and it now occurs to me that they were trying to instil in me a sense — a niggling unease, maybe, or a vague nausea — of when situations might not be safe for me, as a young black male growing up in small town East Texas.
“Don’t stay out too late. Nothing good happens after midnight,” my mom would say. “You have to protect yourself! When the police show up, who do you think is going to get in trouble — you or those little white girls you’re hanging around with?”
I’d always argue with her when she said things like that. Not because she was wrong; because she was right, and her rightness hurt me somewhere deep and inarticulate.”
Tags: ferguson, missouri, news, police brutality, racism, the internet
This is a few days old, so maybe everyone’s seen it, but the link to the catalogue of equipment being used reminded me of the NYT’s map of military surplus gear given out to police. I’ve been thinking one of the answers to the ever-frustrating question “what can we do about this???” is to know what our local police are up to.
Grrreeeah. There are (rare, extraordinary) times when you might want your police officers to have access to body armor, helicopters or night vision.
But when that entire map lights up for “assault rifles”? No. Just, no.
“But, but we have to be armed to the same degree that they are armed! Don’t you get it?”
Yes, I get it, you’re a racist cowering behind a massive weapon that you don’t understand, for reasons that are abhorrent. Good job, buddy. You go get those weed-smokin baddies…
Yeah, when IEDs become a major problem on American roads, I’ll get behind all the mine-resistant vehicles being given out to random rural counties in Nevada.
Today I learned that my county acquired more assault rifles through this process than St. Louis County.
Lord, have mercy.
Christ, have mercy.
It’s not okay, and it’s not going to be okay anytime soon, and we have to keep looking at it and calling it by its name.
No it’s not, no it’s not, and yes we do.
Could someone please, please talk to me about why it is accepted as unquestionable when the cop says he “feared for his life”, even in scenarios where it is absolutely ridiculous? Lawyers out there? Talk to me, I need to understand this.
YES. You hear that one every time a cop kills someone anywhere, it seems — oh, I’m sorry, any time “an officer-involved shooting has occurred.”
That passive-voice thing is galling. People don’t become shot (or fatally chokeheld or beaten). These aren’t things that just OCCUR. Someone does it to them.
Well see, he tripped and fell over and he just HAPPENED to be holding the gun at the time and had his finger on the trigger so when he fell he ACCIDENTALLY pulled the trigger and the bullet magically zigzagged into the air and hit a civilian in the head.
Nine times.
That the entire point of the passive voice. It was invented by lawyers. I am not kidding.
I am not a lawyer (do not take my advice, seriously guys) but my understanding is that the law is trying to get at the shooter’s state of mind at the time of the shooting. The law requires the officer to have a “reasonable” fear of harm to him/herself or others. So actually the question is really, is it “reasonable” to just be afraid of unarmed black teenagers all the goddamned time. “Reasonable” is a very slippery word, as legal stuff goes.
As to why your average Joe on the street believes that the cop really feared for his/her life, well, I think the average Joe on the street probably thinks it’s reasonable to be afraid of black teenagers, so. Unfortunately juries are by definition made up of average Joes.
This newsweek article gets at some of the legal issues: http://www.newsweek.com/how-strong-legal-case-aga…
That some people took the fact that Brown was shot through the top of the head as evidence that he was charging Wilson rather than as evidence that he was falling the fuck down after being shot is right out of the fucking Onion, except for the part where it’s horrible, horrible reality. Like in their minds it is more likely that Brown bent double and ran forward windmilling his arms after being shot or some such shit than it is that it was an unjustified shooting, let alone a straight up murder.
These are not people that see the world as it is. They see it through racist colored glasses.
Oh, totally. But, unfortunately, there is no legal requirement (that I know of — again, not a lawyer here, not even in law school) that a “reasonable” person be, you know, not racist. That is, if the officer’s fear is a reasonable one, it doesn’t matter, mentally, how they got there.
A skilled lawyer or rhetorician could probably argue that in a community where racial tensions run high (due to, you know, actions of police, though our hypothetical skilled lawyer would leave that out), it’s reasonable for police to have an elevated level of fear while policing these communities. (I am not making this argument. I do not think this is reasonable. I am simply noting that someone could.)
I believe someone also argued that the shots in the arm demonstrate an attempt to use less-than-deadly force, rather than (as is strongly suggested by the autopsy) shooting someone whose arms were raised to cover his head.
If the shot in the arm was to try to incapacitate him, then I would think the job was more or less done when he dropped to his needs. The forensics expert already said he could have survived any of the shots except the one directly through his head, so I can’t imagine that argument will fly.
I’m not just referring to this case, incidentally. Apparently if a cop is “afraid for his life” it is basically a free pass, no matter where or how it is applied.
Obviously if a cop is afraid for his life every time he sees a face with more melanin than his, he shouldn’t be allowed to be a cop. I just don’t understand how this provides him with a perfectly reasonable excuse. Surely we all understand how easy it is to CLAIM you were afraid for your life. Hell, lawyers argue that women weren’t afraid for their lives when they kill their assailants, and those women usually have a hell of lot more physical damage than Darren Wilson did.
I hate this, I hate everything about it.
Yes. The law is basically set up to give the benefit of the doubt to cops in these situations; courts usually give cops the benefit of the doubt as well.
Generally speaking and all else being equal, I don’t think we as a society and/or our laws should be giving the benefit of the doubt to the more powerful (politically, socially, physically) actor in a given situation. Unfortunately, this does not seem to be a popular opinion in legal and law enforcement circles.
from a law-person, this is 100% correct and why I was constantly arguing w my professors about “White Male Reasonableness”
Is anyone else getting real pissed off that Facebook’s news feed algorithm is continuously ignoring Ferguson updates?
Case in point: I posted an article about this very issue and only 2 people liked it, despite the fact that I have a lot of politically-aware friends on Facebook. I asked a few of my friends and most said it hadn’t even appeared on their feed.
This is a great rundown of the issue: http://digiday.com/platforms/facbeook-twitter-fer…
And another: http://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/michael-brown-s…
Apologies of this sort of thing has already been posted. I work in this particular industry so this issue is fascinating and also depressing and disappointing.
I’ve had the opposite problem. Well, opposite? I don’t know. Facebook is preferentially showing me status updates and links from friends of friends who are coming down on the side of the cops. As soon as one of my friends comments (to disagree, because I have a heavily curated friends list) I get to see the whole discussion. These are people I’ve never met, or people I’ve purposely unfriended, and I’m finding myself having to block them again and again. It’s really aggravating.
I am boggled by people “supporting” Wilson. Supporting what, exactly? Has he made a public statement yet? Anyone supporting him is unquestioningly supporting a narrative in which the police are always right to shoot an unarmed black man.
Agreed. What I’ve seen is a handful of articles (well, headlines) claiming that he sustained injuries. I didn’t care to click through to the articles or engage with any of it beyond blocking people
This is just me expressing my horror — I completely agree with your statement, one-hundred percent — but whenever I see “unarmed black man” in this case, my brain automatically goes “unarmed black boy.” Because he was only eighteen. I reread Cord Jefferson’s piece again today, about Michael Brown and “the inability of white men with guns to look at black children without guns and see innocence”, and I just get so stuck on the fact that he was eighteen. Not that anything about this is even remotely okay at all, ever . But he was born in 1996. 1996! Jesus.
That sounds like two sides of the same problem.
I wondered!! The same thing has been happening to me. I’ve posted a couple of statuses, as well as two articles/links, and a handful of people (2-5) have liked or commented. Good to know.
YUP. I’ve started commenting on/liking anything on FB that mentions Michael Brown, Ferguson, militarized policing, police reform, systemic racism in policing, etc, because the algorithm (reportedly) disproportionately rewards engagement in the form of clicks, likes, and sharing. And I do notice that as soon as one friend comments on any particular Ferguson post of mine, someone else comments, too, possibly because it just got promoted into their stream.
A few of us have consciously set up a symbiotic commenting system of commenting on each other’s Ferguson posts solely in hopes of getting them higher visibility to others. It seems to be working, but the necessity for trickery heightens my distaste for FB immensely.
I will also say: by far the most commented-upon Ferguson-related post I’ve made didn’t actually mention Ferguson anywhere in the title or URL, just in the headline image and the body of the article, which makes me wonder if the algorithm identifies and dampens downer news links.
That’s a good idea, I will definitely start doing this!
From what I understand, FB tries hard to emulate the everything-is-comfy-all-the-time style of the WALL-E flavor of dystopia, because that’s when people use FB the most: when it’s comfortable and pleasant. Remember those emotional manipulation experiments they ran?
So…yeah. Dystopia. Definitely not neutral. I dunno, maybe someone can do an ice bucket challenge for awareness of police brutality.
I was just talking about this with my roommate last night. Initially, I assumed I had a lot of racist white friends and was pissed that no one seems to be talking about it/engaging on the links I’ve been sharing about what’s going on. Then I remembered that FB is godawful at showing all people all posts, so it’s quite probable that people just haven’t been seeing them, rather than quietly thinking racist thoughts to themselves every time they see a post from me, while scrolling down to see what the new release date is for the Starbucks Pumpkin Spice Latte.
I was wondering about this as well. Yesterday I posted back-to-back articles on FB – the first article was about the two German journalists being arrested in Ferguson by a police officer who identified himself as “Donald Duck.” The second was the now-everywhere story about Bulgarians painting Soviet statues to look like superheroes. Immediate likes for the statue story; no reaction whatsoever to the Ferguson story. I chalked it up to most of my FB people being smug, privileged, and belligerently ignorant, but perhaps there was more to it.
Officer Go Fuck Yourself has been let go, according to the ACLU MO Twitter. https://twitter.com/aclu_mo/status/50218170449343…
Thank goodness for small favors.
“Removed from duty”–it’s not clear whether that’s “got fired” or “is at home on paid leave until this dies down” or somewhere in between. But even the small victories deserve celebration!
Good. Too bad it’s only a drop in the bucket…
http://gawker.com/ferguson-police-threaten-to-sho…
http://hiphopandpolitics.com/2014/08/20/ferguson-…
http://www.aa.com.tr/en/headline/376388–us-aa-jo…
https://pressfreedomfoundation.org/blog/2014/08/d…
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/08/14/ferguson…
http://www.ksdk.com/videos/news/local/2014/08/14/…
Yeah honestly it’s kind of like finding a dog covered in ticks and removing JUST THE ONE and being like welp, took care of that *dusts off tick removing hands*
This article is from last week, so has maybe been posted/discussed before and I just didn’t see it, but: a rep from Georgia is putting forward a bill called “The Stop Militarizing Law Enforcement Act”, so if contacting congressional reps is your bag you could let them know you support this– though obviously the militarization of police is only part of the horror that’s happening.
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/dc/hank-johnson-stop…
Thanks for mentioning this. For those who like some guidance in writing to legislators, there’s a useful page for this bill here: http://capwiz.com/fconl/issues/alert/?alertid=632… It’s from the Friends Committee on National Legislation, which is a Quaker organization, but there’s no religious language in the provided text and you can edit it however you want.
Ferguson holds municipal elections in April of odd-numbered years. In doing so, the town is hardly unique. Approximately three-fourths of American municipalities hold their elections in odd years, a Progressive-era reform intended to shield municipal elections from the partisan politics of national contests, but one that has been shown to have a dramatic effect on reducing turnout.
That Washington Post article is an interesting read. I wish they’d gone more in depth — I had noticed this phenomenon before, but I always assumed it originated as a cynical attempt to suppress voter turnout, which nearly always benefits Republicans. So, like the initiative/referendum process, it’s a Progressive-era reform with good intentions that has been warped from its original purpose. And even if people do get to the polls, becoming informed about local candidates is no easy task (especially with non-partisan positions). Ferguson demonstrates how important local elections are. The Koch brothers already know — they’ve been funneling all sorts of money to under-the-radar local races. Get-out-the-vote efforts make a real difference with this kind of stuff. That’s why the Republicans work so hard on attacking groups like ACORN — when turnout is already low, it doesn’t take much effort to suppress the vote to the point where only the people they want to are voting.
Not surprising but also terrible and frustrating and disappointing: “By about four-to-one (80% to 18%), African Americans say the shooting in Ferguson raises important issues about race that merit discussion. By contrast, whites, by 47% to 37%, say the issue of race is getting more attention than it deserves.”
http://www.people-press.org/2014/08/18/stark-raci…
Yes, this. Both graphs.
It feels like half the people I know these days don't even know anything is happening in Ferguson. How can you not know? I want to scream. But yes: they don't know because they don't have to know, they've never had to know, it's "not their circus, not their monkeys," (an actual thing someone said to me about Ferguson, and I exercised heroic restraint and did not deck him) and they have MUCH MORE important issues to occupy their minds with, don't you know.
Maybe worse than these, though: the Right-Wing Noise machine and the so many lies they are shotgunning out into the world, hoping some of them, any of them, will stick. And if what happened with Zimmerman has taught us anything, many of them will.
Elon James White pointed out on Twitter that one thing people can do to help is organize demonstrations of solidarity in their own cities and towns, to let your own police forces know that people are aware of this possibility and don’t want to see it become a reality in that specific spot — that we know that police departments may work and often do work to cover up the racist and violent actions of officers, and that we are watching them.
You know, I’m wondering — even a letter signed, in person, by as many local people as possible, saying, “You know what happened and what’s happening now in Ferguson? We hope you guys weren’t thinking you could get away with anything like that, and we are going to be on the lookout for anything here that even LOOKS LIKE it might SLIGHTLY RESEMBLE that.” In more professional language, obviously. This seems like it would work best in a smallish city, rather than someplace like, say, Miami where it would be impossible for anyone to keep track of everything that’s happening, although it might work for neighborhood precincts in a big city.
This seems like one of the arenas in which being white might actually help, in cities/towns in which police forces have established that they treat Black people with contempt — you’d be less likely to put yourself in danger by signing it.
And then keep an eye on the Police Blotter section of the paper, and an ear to the ground, and decide what you’re going to do if the police department is not even a little swayed by the words of the people it’s supposed to serve and protect.
Every period up there should be a question mark — if anyone knows reasons why this strategy would be useless or worse, please feel free to knock it down!
Yeah honestly it's kind of like finding a dog covered in ticks and removing JUST THE ONE and being like welp, took care of that *dusts off tick removing hands*